The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." As the United States faces dramatic budget cuts due to the sequestration, it is important to point out that military spending in the United States accounts 56 percent of the world's total military expenditures, surging to US $1.74 trillion in 2011, which is more than the military budgets of the next 20 countries in the world combined.